Tag Archives: yeast

If this looks familiar – that’s because it is. It’s not the first time that I’ve made this gluten free vegan potato bread, but I have made quite a few changes and improvements (these pictures are my latest – it took 6 tries to get something I am completely happy with), so I wanted to share the new and improved recipe. The things I really like about this bread (besides it being incredibly tasty) are that despite being fairly dense, it is nice and moist (even 3 days later!) and can be sliced fairly thinly (~1/2 cm or 1/4″) without falling apart while eating it.

One major difference between the two versions is that I used weight measurements for the flours. I decided to do this after reading about Amy’s adventures in her bread making class. It allows you to have way more control and consistency in the amount of flour you use. In my opinion, it helps get the balance between being too dry and dense and not having enough structure to rise without collapsing. 🙂

Add in potato mixture and beat on medium speed until combined, about one minute.

Add in flour mixture in two parts, beating on medium speed for about a minute to combine for each addition.

Scrape dough onto a flour covered board. Liberally dust your hands with flour and shape dough into a rectangle about 2″ thick. Flip the dough over and flatten until about 1 1/2″ thick.

Roll up rectangle, making sure there are no air pockets until the dough is all in a roll and pinch the seam shut.

Fold the ends of the roll toward the seam so the loaf is about the length of the pan. Place in pan seam down.

Use a pastry brush to brush on the remaining olive oil.

Place a large dish full of water in your oven and heat the oven up to 150F. Turn it off.

Cover the loaf with a clean dish towel and place in the oven to rise for about a half hour or until bread has risen and has “rips” in it. I find after this point, the bread only rises out, not up, which will result in a flat top, which is undesirable.

Using a serrated knife, cut three diagonal stripes on the top of the loaf.

Turn the oven to 400F and let the loaf bake for 20 minutes. (I usually just leave the dish of water in the oven.)

Then turn the oven down to 325F and let the loaf bake for about 35 minutes or until the top is golden brown and it sounds hollow when tapped.

Turn out from pan and let it cool down.

If you’re going to freeze it (this makes a LOT of bread!), slice fairly thinly and place a small piece of wax paper between each slice. Wrap in plastic wrap as well as tin foil and place in an air-tight bag. I usually cut about 12 – 15 slices and freeze them and then leave the rest of the loaf to eat.

You know what’s quintessential to Holy Week for me? Hot cross buns. Unfortunately, after going gluten free, pretty much almost all of the hot cross buns (even the ones I have tried making!) I’ve had are synonymous to hockey pucks: suIper dry, dense and hard. In a word, disappointing. So, of course, I wanted to try making some again, this time being egg, dairy and (mostly) refined sugar free.

Unfortunately, my quick search of the interwebs didn’t bring up anything too promising, so I determined to try to make my own. The following recipe is based on this Hot Cross Bun recipe by the Baking Beauties. Of course, I made it egg free and changed things up a little.

When I took these babies out of the oven and pulled off the first bun, I let out a happy cry. Although a big dense, the texture was almost perfect! They were hard on the outside, soft on the inside, ripped apart nicely and delicious with just a hint of sweetness. The only down side is that they do dry out fairly quickly (all the more reason to eat them as soon as possible!), but stick them in the microwave wrapped in a paper towel for about 20 seconds and it’s back to soft delicious-ness.

A few notes:

Very important to spoon flour into cup so that it is not too dense or dry!

The recipe listed below is not refined sugar free because I used glace mix (the small coloured chunks of candied stuff). It can easily be made refined sugar free by using a mixture of sugar free dried fruits.

Once they are cool, store in an air tight plastic bag. Don’t stick them in the fridge as that encourages them to dry out faster!

In a liquid measure cup, measure out warm water. Add the yeast and 1 tsp. of honey. Stir until yeast is dissolved. Set aside to proof.

In a medium bowl, measure out all the dry ingredients, making sure to spoon flours into the measuring cups, not scoop them. Whisk together until combined. Set aside.

In the bowl of a mixer, put the egg replacer, applesauce, apple cider vinegar, 1 tbsp + 2 tsp. honey, coconut oil and lemon zest. Beat on medium until mixture is well combined and you can no longer see any big-ish chunks of coconut oil.

Add the water yeast mixture and beat until combined.

Spoon in the dry ingredients at low speed until combined. Then beat on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes. Mix in raisins and citron peel.

Spoon dough into the 8″ pan making 9 about evenly sized and spaced buns. The dough at this point is quite sticky, so it’s okay if it’s not in a perfect bun shape.

Cover with a dish towel and let rise until about doubled in size. (I left mine on the kitchen counter and went away for two hours and came back, but if you don’t have that time, stick the buns in a warm place where they will rise much faster. The original recipe said about 35 minutes for rapid acting yeast and 60 minutes for regular yeast.)

Preheat oven to 375F. Using a sharp knife, use the tip to cut a cross in each bun.

Bake for about 24 minutes or until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Remove and let them cool.

If you so desire, you can mix some icing sugar with a small amount of water and pipe on crosses. I only did it to two buns for pictures as otherwise they were sweet enough.

Like this:

I know lamb is not everyone’s favourite meat, but when it’s done right, it’s one of my favourite. It’s definitely not something I eat on a regular basis given its cost, but I was determined to make lamb stew for St. Patrick’s Day. One of the local Irish type pubs around here makes a stew in a bread bowl – I’ve obviously never tried it, but the idea of it seems quite interesting to me. I unfortunately didn’t have enough time to try making a whole loaf of bread, let alone two – one for both Mr. Bean and I. So, I thought I would try to make buns using the easiest bread recipe in the Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook by Cybele Pascal – gluten free beer bread.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from beer bread as I think I’ve had gluten free beer twice before this. It was really tasty with a bit of margarine and dipped in stew! Yum. I was actually really impressed with their texture and how much they rose in the oven. I almost wished I added more water to the stew so that we’d have more stew to mop up at the end.

A few notes:

The cut of lamb I used was very fatty, but that’s okay because lamb fat generally stays in strips that are easy enough to cut out with a knife and a bit of patience. You can probably use a different cut if you find it and your budget allows for it. I didn’t feel like paying $28/kg for a leaner cut of lamb, so I got the fattier one for $11/kg. Since the meat is being stewed for an extended period of time, you can use a tougher and fattier cut of meat and it will still turnout to be incredibly tender.

You can add pretty much any spices or vegetables you feel like. Don’t feel restricted by the ones I have listed here!

Make sure that the beer is at room temperature so that the yeast actually gets to do what it’s supposed to. I think fresh from the cooler beer doesn’t quite work as well.

Feel free to use any kind of gluten free beer – I just used one of the kinds Mr. Bean found at our local liquor store.

Cut off as much fat as you can from the lamb shoulder chops. Be wary as this can be very time consuming! Cut into 1″ – 1 1/2″ pieces. Don’t bother trying to cut the meat off the bone as it comes off way easier once it is cooked.

Place meat in slow cooker. Add vegetables, potatoes and spices on top of meat.

Cover meat and most of the vegetables with water. Stir to mix spices and to mostly cover everything with liquid.

Cook on low for 8 hours or on medium for 6 hours.

About 15 minutes before you want to eat the stew, mix a fair amount of cornstarch with some cold water. Mix to combine. Pour into slow cooker and stir. Wait until it thickens and add more if necessary to get the desired thickness.

Like this:

One of my favourite activities as a kid was making bread with either my mom or grannie. My siblings and I would take turns mixing ingredients and kneading the dough. In the summer, we’d make it out on the deck at the cottage and let it rise in the sun under a dish cloth.. The hardest part for me was waiting for the dough to rise and to not get caught snitching from the bottom of the rising bread dough!

I’m kind of sad that bread making is no longer such a family affair, but it doesn’t mean that it has to be any less enjoyable. Unfortunately, as many of you know, gluten free bread does its best to leach out any enjoyment in bread making as it has a tendency to like to turn into a brick, collapses in the middle or some other epic failure. (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Of course not!) Out of all the GF bread I’ve tried to make over my life, the only success we’ve had was when Mr. Bean made me a loaf of bread using a recipe one of his coworkers gave me. In fact, it was so successful that it rose over the sides of the pan and was gushing out bread batter while it was cooking in the oven and then fell part way through baking. Despite its baking angst, the texture was fantastic and it was very tasty!

However, when I found out that this month’s gluten free challenge over at The Gluten-Free Homemaker was to bake a loaf of yeast bread, adventurous me wanted to try something that was different. I’m also not eating eggs, so that recipe was a no go anyways.

I found a recipe for potato bread in the Allergen-Free Bakers Handbook, but I haven’t been able to find any soy and dairy free shortening or rice milk powder in these parts and I wanted to make it refined sugar free, I had to improvise. I changed some of the ingredients to use materials I had on hand, including using a less starch heavy flour mixture. I also divided it up into two loaves as I didn’t want it to overflow like the previous time (but that turned out to be unnecessary – go figure). The bread was a bit dense, so I want to go back and readjust amounts of liquids and flours. It still tasted pretty good. Or at least it did to Mr. Bean and I. 🙂

Like this:

A while ago I won a bag of Carol’s (from Simply Gluten Free) gourmet all purpose gluten free flour. Since I usually use a mixture of rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch in varying ratios depending on the use, I was interested to see how this flour mix would compare.

I was quite excited to put it to the test, so I began to think of what baked items translate into gluten free poorly. First was pastry and the other was yeast breads. Since I didn’t really feel like making pie, I decided to make cinnamon buns. Mr. Bean made me cinnamon buns over a year ago with this recipe and they were quite good but I wanted to make them better. In addition, I’m currently trying to figure out whether I should be eating eggs and/or dairy, so I wanted to make the buns vegan.

Fortunately for the flour, it passed with flying colours – the buns were tasty, gooey, fluffy and not crumbly. Everything a cinnamon bun should be!

Add sugar and yeast to rice milk, mix until there are no big yeast clumps. Let proof for 5 – 10 minutes.

Cream together sugar and margarine. Add egg replacer and milk and mix together. (Don’t be afraid if the margarine and rice milk do not mix together very well due to the polar and non polar properties of the water and fat respectively.)

Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. The dough should be very soft.

Spread a piece of plastic wrap over a large cutting board and sprinkle with sugar. My plastic wrap was about 1′ by 1 1/2′.

Place dough on middle of plastic wrap. Put another piece of plastic wrap, about the same size as the first, over the dough.

Using your hands and a rolling pin, roll the dough out until about 1/2″ thick and in a rectangular or square shape. (If you want more smaller buns, use a rectangle, but if you want large buns, form the dough into a square shape. )

Remove the top plastic wrap and spread the melted margarine over the dough.

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon and spread over the dough evenly, leaving about an inch of the dough uncovered to prevent sugar from spilling out after the dough has been rolled.

Using the bottom piece of plastic wrap to help you, roll up the dough to create a log.

Cut into pieces between 1 1/2″ to 2″ thick, depending on how many rolls you want.

Place in greased dish with some space between them.

Heat oven to 375F and cover the buns with one of the pieces of plastic wrap and place them on top of the heat exhaust spout of the oven (mine is under one of the elements on the stove) or on the stove to rise while the oven is heating up.

Once the oven is heated, bake rolls for about 20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

If desired, you can glaze them with a mixture of icing sugar, vanilla extract and rice milk once they are out of the oven.

Enjoy!

The verdict? Delicious. My dad said that these were the best gluten free cinnamon anything that he has ever had and wanted me to come and teach him how to make them.